what beats matrox?

[Zipzop]

Hi,

My two-year old computer has been giving me major problems and I once again find myself having to reformat and upgrade.

When I first got this machine I picked the Matrox G400 DualHead card (along with the Rainbow-Runner add-on), for its excellent array of features. But recently
when trying to upgrade away from Windows98SE my Matrox card has been giving me major headaches.

Basically, I want to upgrade to Win2k or WinXP, but it seems unclear whether my matrox card will continue to perform the features I bought it for on those platforms.
Those features:

Dual independent displays
Video Capture/TV tuner
3D acceleration
TV-out
DVD-out

so - my question is: can anyone recommend a newer card that does all these things? Or perhaps a combination of cards (but ideally one)?
is Matrox the only card with the Dual Head feature?

my thanks to anyone who can give me some advice.

 

[boran]

okay I never tought id' say this (me is increddible nvidiot) but you could go for an ati card, ati all in wonder cards have all the features you want to have and are the best on thos features (the GF2MX has some of those features too but does less of a job) but I need to know how big yer budget is first ...

 

[Finality]

<< okay I never tought id' say this (me is increddible nvidiot) but you could go for an ati card, ati all in wonder cards have all the features you want to have and are the best on thos features (the GF2MX has some of those features too but does less of a job) but I need to know how big yer budget is first ... >>



Surely you never read this part properly:

<< Basically, I want to upgrade to Win2k or WinXP >>

Good luck getting an All In Wonder to work well in an NT based OS god knows I've tried..

 

[Damascus]

All those will work under Win2K with two caveats:

3D acceleration stinks compared to today's cards.
Video capture works fine, as long as you use a software codec because
the Win2K drivers do not support the hardware Zoran MJPEG chip.

 

[rbV5]

Acually your matrox has the only dual head independant displays under win2k support, none of the ATI cards will do that. Even the 8500 offers the dual head support but no Video-in, while the upcoming 8500dv has the VIVO, but only a single RAMDAC (no hydavision for dual head support.) a different upcoming model could certainly have both.

Finality may have had difficulty with his AIW in Win2k, but I've run my AIW and VIVO Radeons for nearly a year now in nothing but Win2k and now WinXP, and they are both great performers.

If your 3D was fine for you in Win98, It should be fine in XP. Like Damascus stated however, you lose your MJPEG support, but the rest of the features of your card are supported.

 

[boran]

<< Surely you never read this part properly:

<< Basically, I want to upgrade to Win2k or WinXP >>

Good luck getting an All In Wonder to work well in an NT based OS god knows I've tried.. >>



whoopsie, forget what I said almost all ati cards totally suck under the NT kernel ...

I think your 400 will have to last a bit longer untill ati has it's 8500 all in wonder thinggie out and working under XP (cous they HAVE to get it working it is the primary Os now (or it is supposed to be that in the future ...)

 

[Zipzop]

thanks for the advice everyone... and keep it comin'...

so far it looks like I'm gonna have to go with Windows2k, since there is no support for my Matrox capture card under XP.

hopefully someday someone will actually make a card that works well with modern operating systems.

unfortunately, as Damascus pointed out, my hardware compressor will no longer work.... any advice on video capturing in Win2k?

 

[Damascus]

I have the RRG and Win2K as well and what I do is use VirtualDub as
my capture software and a software MJPEG codec, PICVideo (don't remember
the URL, but you know where Google is ). I got it when it was free, but I
think you need to pay for the codec now... $20 I think. Still pretty cheap,
and it actually has better captured picture quality than the hardware
codec on the Zoran chip.

You said your system was two years old, so I don't know if it is fast enough
to do software capture. I'm lucky to have an Athlon which has more than
enough muscle to do the job.